Thumbnail for txt files

[mopperle]

I'm sure this has been asked before, but neither the forum serach nor seraching the help system gave me an answer (may search string was not correct).

Is there a way to display a thumbnail for txt files, other then the associated program icon?

[Mario]

This is easy to do via standard versioning: File Relations: Versioning
Setup a manual or automatic version rule that makes e.g. a JPG or PNG file the version of your text files. Enable the Visual Proxy option for the version.

Now IMatch displays the version image instead of the regular thumbnail for the master. Works with text files the same as with image files.

Here is a .TXT file with a PNG file version:



Note: If you need this only occasionally or for a small number of files, make the version rule a "manual only" rule.
You can then version manually on-demand.

Tip: The images you use as versions don't have to be in the same folder or anything for manual versions. If you can bring them into the same file window somehow (e.g. moving them into the IMatch Clipboard and then opening them in a result window) you can keep the TXT image proxies in a dedicated folder somewhere on your disk.

[mopperle]

Sorry, maybe I was not clear enough. I do not want to see jpg/png instead of the programm icon.
The thumbnail should show a preview, like with video files (1st frame) or PDF or even other files. Here an example:

[Mario]

If you have Affinity Software installed, IMatch usually can produce a suitable preview using the installed thumbnail handler. It works for Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo and should also work for Publisher. If this fails, IMatch falls back to using the icon of the associated application. Then the log file should show an error message. Which version of IMatch are you using on which Windows version? Are Affinite products installed?

Here is a sample from my database: An Affinity Designer file and a PSD file:



There cannot be thumbnails for text files (.TXT), obviously. IMatch does not read text files and renders them in some way to produce a blurry preview. You can see a preview of text files and many other file formats in the Quick View Panel.

[mopperle]

Are Affinite products installed?
 

Yes, thats why the Publisher file (.afpub) is displayed correctly in my example.
And if txt files can not be shown like this, my question has been answered.

[Mario]

I have never thought about making some sort of "image" from plan text files. At 300px, even a few lines read would probably just render some black squiggly lines on a white background? I don't see much sense in that for .txt, .json, .xml and other plain text formats.